Gunship

[Cognisant]

I have incredibly vivid dreams sometimes, this time it was a full late 80s early 90s style anime sci-fi movie.

The setting is an alternative Earth (different planet, different nations, similar animals, same humans) in the near future (within the next 100yrs) and our protagonist was born around the conclusion of the Global War. This wasn't just a few industrial nations with everyone else getting dragged in, this planet has basically two continents that are mostly separate from each other so when the war started it was continent vs continent. The war was fought over about a dozen generations, it was very culturally defining, the protagonist's side won and their technological level is roughly ours 50-100yrs from now, so they have nice stuff but nothing too crazy.

At the start of the story the protagonist (no name given) is in his late 20s, due to a government genetic-engineering program he was born with something like thermal vision and is therefore preordained to be a gunship pilot. This isn't particularly special, there's thousands of people who got the same treatment and millions more with different genetic modifications for different roles. Being a gunship pilot is respectable but not inherently prestigious. Parents can decide to submit their unborn children to this genetic engineering programs, it's considered a patriotic thing to do, the child gets relevant scholarships and military healthcare, but they are obligated to serve so it's culturally considered more of a trade-off than a benefit or something you're forced into.

Most of this is me speculating based on vibes I felt while watching the movie.

The protagonist is a black haired Japanese every-man, aside from his eyes everything about him is incredibly mundane, he's the mediocre boyfriend of a mediocre girlfriend, they don't really love each other but they paired up in the academy because that's what everyone was doing and they're both committed to upholding the pretense. He has a slightly nerdy friend group he hangs out with, his family are generic and loving, he has no particular trauma, basically this guy is boring AF. We get a lot of his internal dialogue, he's concerned about his relationship, considering his career path after his service is over, worried what might happen during his service, worried about the morality of what he's being asked to do, has lots of thoughts about politics, economics, philosophy and other pointless shit. He has a lot on his mind.

With his academy and flight school scholarships completed it's now his turn to go fight the good fight, the Global War may be over but the war began after space colonization started, so now he's part of one of many task forces being sent out into the galaxy to stamp out the hated enemy's colonies before they become a problem in the future. Imagine the Nazis escaped to Alpha Centauri, are you going to let them found a Nazi empire? Ignore the fact that they're fleeing from you and that your side might be the actual Nazis, it's not patriotic to question things like that.

A gunship is an attack helicopter with even more weapons, various ECM systems, stealth features and harrier like thrust vectoring, importantly they can descend from orbit. Like the attack helicopters in Vietnam a gunship's role is to clear the landing zone, provide cover fire for the transports and fire support for ground forces.

Googled "future hind gunship" and this best fits the vibe.

Protagonist is sent into combat as part of a landing mission and things go poorly, in part because they're ambushed and in part because he's shooting near the enemy, rather than at them, because he's concerned about the morality of what he's doing, and scared, and thinking about a million other things that aren't his job. Before departing his girlfriend asked him to impregnate her in case he doesn't come back, he's surprised since they're not even married yet, she reassures him that if he dies the government will look after her financially and he realizes that's what this is actually about, he refuses and says he's coming back.

He gets shot down and his gunship lands in a thick rainforest, there he meets a tribe of people who have reverted to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle and couldn't give a damn about the war happening around them. The tribe takes him in and they teach him their ways, how to navigate, how to survive, how to hunt, rather than teaching him to be conscientious and in touch with nature they teach him to stop thinking about things outside of his control and to focus on the present. This culminates in an encounter with this world's equivalent of a crocodile, which is basically just a crocodile, his spear can't penetrate its tough hide so he's forced to wait for it in waist deep water and spear it through the mouth when it attacks him, putting the tribe's teachings to the test. Also while living with the tribe he meets a girl who is very attractive, very into him and not too young but perhaps too young for him by society's standards. Like 18 and he's almost thirty.

Allied forces find him, recover and repair his gunship, he leaves the tribe to return to the war happening on this planet and putting their teachings into practice he's gone from an incompetent pacifist to a ruthless killer, he knows it's immoral, he doesn't care, the universe is a pitiless place and he's not here to be anybody's hero. He rises through the ranks, dumps his girlfriend back home and gets the tribal girl conscripted as his personal assistant, gets her pregnant and ultimately dies years later as his gunship is shot down in combat over some other alien world. His son goes on to follow in his footsteps.

The whole story is basically the inversion of the typical hero's journey of developing some kind of moral character or conscientiousness, there's no power of friendship, no reconnecting lost family, no romantic development, his relationship with the tribal girl is equally as pragmatic as the one he had with the girl back home and the only difference is that she doesn't mind, she's totally down with the man that he's become.

 

[Cognisant]

I still come back to this clip occasionally because I like how it re-contextualizes the song. From an African-American woman singing about her ex going to jail, to said woman narrating to Deunan that her circumstances have changed but she's still in danger. That she needs to open up to Hitomi and Briareos, and wishing her luck with the nightmares, presumably PTSD related but also a portent of things to come.

Is this related to the OP? Ehh, maybe, I dunno.

Speaking of I'd really appreciate some feedback, I'm concerned that this story that bucks the convention of character development as moral enlightenment might come off as a bit reductive. That the character is developing in reverse, becoming less nuanced.

 

[fluffy]

Has any story you encountered been about anti-charater development before?

I saw once a show where the main character never changed even though he lost a leg in the giant robots war. He slipped away from the war after completing his mission with a girl. But his personality was the same. I saw it when 13 on Cartoon Network adult swim. (midnight to 3 am)

 

[fractalwalrus]

I have incredibly vivid dreams sometimes, this time it was a full late 80s early 90s style anime sci-fi movie.

The setting is an alternative Earth (different planet, different nations, similar animals, same humans) in the near future (within the next 100yrs) and our protagonist was born around the conclusion of the Global War. This wasn't just a few industrial nations with everyone else getting dragged in, this planet has basically two continents that are mostly separate from each other so when the war started it was continent vs continent. The war was fought over about a dozen generations, it was very culturally defining, the protagonist's side won and their technological level is roughly ours 50-100yrs from now, so they have nice stuff but nothing too crazy.

At the start of the story the protagonist (no name given) is in his late 20s, due to a government genetic-engineering program he was born with something like thermal vision and is therefore preordained to be a gunship pilot. This isn't particularly special, there's thousands of people who got the same treatment and millions more with different genetic modifications for different roles. Being a gunship pilot is respectable but not inherently prestigious. Parents can decide to submit their unborn children to this genetic engineering programs, it's considered a patriotic thing to do, the child gets relevant scholarships and military healthcare, but they are obligated to serve so it's culturally considered more of a trade-off than a benefit or something you're forced into.

Most of this is me speculating based on vibes I felt while watching the movie.

The protagonist is a black haired Japanese every-man, aside from his eyes everything about him is incredibly mundane, he's the mediocre boyfriend of a mediocre girlfriend, they don't really love each other but they paired up in the academy because that's what everyone was doing and they're both committed to upholding the pretense. He has a slightly nerdy friend group he hangs out with, his family are generic and loving, he has no particular trauma, basically this guy is boring AF. We get a lot of his internal dialogue, he's concerned about his relationship, considering his career path after his service is over, worried what might happen during his service, worried about the morality of what he's being asked to do, has lots of thoughts about politics, economics, philosophy and other pointless shit. He has a lot on his mind.

With his academy and flight school scholarships completed it's now his turn to go fight the good fight, the Global War may be over but the war began after space colonization started, so now he's part of one of many task forces being sent out into the galaxy to stamp out the hated enemy's colonies before they become a problem in the future. Imagine the Nazis escaped to Alpha Centauri, are you going to let them found a Nazi empire? Ignore the fact that they're fleeing from you and that your side might be the actual Nazis, it's not patriotic to question things like that.

A gunship is an attack helicopter with even more weapons, various ECM systems, stealth features and harrier like thrust vectoring, importantly they can descend from orbit. Like the attack helicopters in Vietnam a gunship's role is to clear the landing zone, provide cover fire for the transports and fire support for ground forces.

Googled "future hind gunship" and this best fits the vibe.
View attachment 8534

Protagonist is sent into combat as part of a landing mission and things go poorly, in part because they're ambushed and in part because he's shooting near the enemy, rather than at them, because he's concerned about the morality of what he's doing, and scared, and thinking about a million other things that aren't his job. Before departing his girlfriend asked him to impregnate her in case he doesn't come back, he's surprised since they're not even married yet, she reassures him that if he dies the government will look after her financially and he realizes that's what this is actually about, he refuses and says he's coming back.

He gets shot down and his gunship lands in a thick rainforest, there he meets a tribe of people who have reverted to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle and couldn't give a damn about the war happening around them. The tribe takes him in and they teach him their ways, how to navigate, how to survive, how to hunt, rather than teaching him to be conscientious and in touch with nature they teach him to stop thinking about things outside of his control and to focus on the present. This culminates in an encounter with this world's equivalent of a crocodile, which is basically just a crocodile, his spear can't penetrate its tough hide so he's forced to wait for it in waist deep water and spear it through the mouth when it attacks him, putting the tribe's teachings to the test. Also while living with the tribe he meets a girl who is very attractive, very into him and not too young but perhaps too young for him by society's standards. Like 18 and he's almost thirty.

Allied forces find him, recover and repair his gunship, he leaves the tribe to return to the war happening on this planet and putting their teachings into practice he's gone from an incompetent pacifist to a ruthless killer, he knows it's immoral, he doesn't care, the universe is a pitiless place and he's not here to be anybody's hero. He rises through the ranks, dumps his girlfriend back home and gets the tribal girl conscripted as his personal assistant, gets her pregnant and ultimately dies years later as his gunship is shot down in combat over some other alien world. His son goes on to follow in his footsteps.

The whole story is basically the inversion of the typical hero's journey of developing some kind of moral character or conscientiousness, there's no power of friendship, no reconnecting lost family, no romantic development, his relationship with the tribal girl is equally as pragmatic as the one he had with the girl back home and the only difference is that she doesn't mind, she's totally down with the man that he's become.

I tend to enjoy the subversion of paradigms and expectations when it is executed well. The nihilism inherent in this tale seems to be more reflective of reality than the "hero's journey." This famed journey is often recycled because it works, and I sometimes wonder if the effectiveness of this recycled plotline is due to the desire of people to believe that heroes exist. That someone is coming to the rescue. There may be some "moral titans" out there in the real world, but they are rarities and lack the influence to gain notice. Keep the story.

 

[Cognisant]

Nihilism is a good word for it, an acceptance of nihilism, that a solider in a war has no real say in that war's outcome or why it's being fought, so insofar as they're following orders what the morality of what they're doing doesn't really concern them.

Imagine sitting in a room and being paid to press a button, you know every time that button is pressed someone somewhere far away dies, you also know that this is a great job and that quitting won't change anything, someone else will happily take your place as the button presser, the drone operator.

Is it your fault? Or is it the fault of the people who created the button and your circumstances, if so then you're not the one doing the killing, you're just a component in a larger machine that someone else is controlling, and the button you press is just a button.

It would be really fun to have this nihilistic villain-protagonist whose only notable characteristic is being good at his job encounter a more conventional "hero's journey" hero, a heroic-antagonist... hmm I wonder if there's a trope for that. There is!

I saw once a show where the main character never changed even though he lost a leg in the giant robots war. He slipped away from the war after completing his mission with a girl. But his personality was the same. I saw it when 13 on Cartoon Network adult swim. (midnight to 3 am)

Damn I really want to know what that show was, doesn't ring a bell for me.

 

[fractalwalrus]

Is it your fault? Or is it the fault of the people who created the button and your circumstances, if so then you're not the one doing the killing, you're just a component in a larger machine that someone else is controlling, and the button you press is just a button.

Not to mention the fact that most of us derive our moral foundations from the norms of those around us. Hey, no one in charge is saying the button pushing is bad, in fact. they think the opposite! And, they get to be part of a heroic organization for doing so.